Resource - VideoChildren's Festival Australia, 10th Anniversary



Children's Festival Australia, 10th Anniversary



Explanation of resource:
This resource is a video from the easy and highly accessible website YouTube. The video gives details about a festival for children that celebrates Cultural Diversity amongst the children, local community and Austalia wide. The entertaining seven minute video has a wide variety of visual features such as images/video like photographs, drawings, performances and symbol. It also includes audio like music and song and also spoken word portrayed through interviews. All these features work together to provide Modal Complexity which provides excellent opportunities for integration with literacy.
It is appropriate for stage two students as the focus is on children in the primary age range and the content is really easy to follow, offering a feast for the eyes and ears that pertains to be of great use for an introductory lesson. Information is presented in its multimodal ways making it interesting and specific information is highlighted.
Relevance of resource to the outcome:
The video provides an abundance of information and appeals to a wide audience, especially primary school children as it supports the focus outcome CUS2.3 and is specific in relevance to a unit of work on the identity of a culturally diverse community. It shows rich views of the history and modern-day Bankstown community but of various visitors on the day, on customs, practices, symbols, languages and traditions (BOS, 2007, p.54).

This resource is suitable to mesh with several English units across various contexts to aid in exploring other English modes and features. It can also be stretched across other KLA's which harness the development of intergrated learning and highlights aspects of literacy in those other contexts. The video brings about a collection of visual features that could be explored in literacy, that includes:
-information reports
-personal responses
-observation
- review
-explanation
- discussion



The interactive meanings of the video with the Discussion focus, will allow students to reflect on its content and how it is constructed.Without all the visual features a video provides, the meanings and features will not be specific or make sense in relation to the HSIE topic. The video depicts the community as well as the people within the community and the activities that occur during the day and together, the resource provides opportunities to explore the use modal complexity which will give the students the skills to incorporate their new learning of literacy into their multimodal lesson.

Students should be aware of various text types and be fluent in a number of them as they "are crucial to students’ learning in the primary school curriculum and to participating effectively in the wider community" (BOS, K-6 English Syllabus, pg. 66).
This large selection is narrowed down to focus on Discussion. This offers a great start to get the topic rolling and gives the students the opportunity to put across their different point of views and any ideas they might have. Being involved with a Discussion text type has a significant impact on how students see and relate to the world around them, examine issues from more than one Discussion perspective and make recommendations based on evidence.